


17.  empty

by Ferith12



Series: 50 prompts [17]
Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:28:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29413407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferith12/pseuds/Ferith12
Summary: You remember the moment when Mrs. Wayne, smiling and tired, had placed her infant son in your arms, you remember how you held him with a sort of awed, panicked helplessness.  All your life you have been defined by your unerring competence, but children come with no operating manual, and you have never known how to begin.
Relationships: Alfred Pennyworth & Bruce Wayne
Series: 50 prompts [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2040545
Kudos: 1





	17.  empty

You’re not used to failure, that’s the trouble of it.

They all said you were such a bright boy in school, and you could have ended up quite famous as an actor if the idea of fame hadn’t thoroughly repelled you. (That was the problem of acting, it was in some ways your heart’s calling, but if you couldn’t be too good at it without becoming Known.) You were something of a legend in Her Majesty’s service, though the number of people who know even rumors of what you did in that shadowy era of your life are very few. And of course, when your father made you his dying request and you reluctantly acquiesced, you  _ committed _ to your new vocation as a butler, there had never been a butler so butler-like as you, so correct, so utterly imperturbable, so perfectly knowledgeable, so prepared for every eventuality. Well, every eventuality save one.

You remember the moment when Mrs. Wayne, smiling and tired, had placed her infant son in your arms, you remember how you held him with a sort of awed, panicked helplessness. All your life you have been defined by your unerring competence, but children come with no operating manual, and you have never known how to begin.

It is not that he has been a failed pursuit, it is that you have failed him.

By all rights you should close up the old house. You have no claim to it, if Bruce dies everything he has will be scattered among his distant relations. This house is not your home, by rights you should close it up, let it wait forgotten in cold silence for its truant master’s return. But you can’t bare to do that.

He did not run away from you, this boy you have so inadequately raised. He simply finished his schooling (up to a highschool level, at least in name) and chose not to return home.

You do not know where he went. But you assure everyone who asks, reporters, businessmen, that of course he is perfectly alright, of course it is perfectly ordinary for young billionaires to disappear without a trace. Boys must be allowed to spread their wild oats when they are young, you say with a kind of fond, disapproving ruefulness that belongs entirely to the character of The Butler.

You are tempted, oh so tempted, to reach out to old contacts, to track him down to south america or china or wherever it is he has run off in some mad quest to find himself, or the meaning of the universe, or justice, or whatever it is he searches so desperately for, to at least know that he is safe. But you know that you will not find him safe, this ridiculous boy of yours, wherever he is. And what then? What will you do if you do find him, poking his young, idealistic nose into trouble too big for either of you, you who have been retired more than eighteen years, with all the miles between.

You could not drag him home with you, and you’ve no right to in any case, no right to this child who is a grown man and never truly yours to begin with.

And so all there is to do is wait. All there is to do is remain and hope he will return to you, safe and whole as he can be.

You keep his home open for him, so that any day he might walk in through his front door and find all his belongings where he left them, and breakfast ready in the morning.

You remain. A butler in the old manor, relics of a past forgotten (a shining legacy now dead). You remain, wandering this house that is not yours, keeping it all in order and ready for its master’s return, a ghost in the emptiness. 


End file.
